Post by Bonobo on Mar 11, 2018 20:59:29 GMT 1

Funny, I didn`t know such devices are so popular in Poland. I just don`t travel by train. Such deterents are installed next to railway tracks. Simona Kossak who you know from another thread designed the special soundtrack for it.

Product descriptionThe wild animals do not regard trains on the railway tracks as their natural enemies; they get used to the noise produced by these machines and accept them as part of their own habitat. Furthermore, the speeds that are developed today by trains, frequently around 160-200 km per hour, exceed the speeds that these animals have become familiar with during their natural existence in forests, on fields or meadows. The time to react, to escape is too short for an animal to give it a chance to survive such an encounter with a train.

Making use of our many years of experience in construction of microprocessor devices for the Polish State Railways and of the numerous consultations and cooperation with ecologists, scientists and experts in the field of wild animal behaviour, NEEL Ltd., along with specialists from other companies, has developed a state-of-the-art solution to the problem. Today this unique worldwide animal deterring device under the product name UOZ-1 is manufactured by NEEL Ltd. – a Warsaw-based production company.

These devices are designed to prevent such species as the roe-deer, the red-deer, the elk, the bison, the wild boar or the fox from migrating through railway tracks directly at the time of a passing train at the speed V=160km/h. This system limits to the minimum the loss in the wild animal population caused by collisions with fast moving trains and yet allows these animals to pass across the tracks when there is no danger of such collisions.

These devices operate through sound signals, which deter animals from coming near the tracks. The signals are emitted by the UOZ-1 device for a certain time, directly before a train approaches the site. The animals perceive the sounds as a real warning and react as they do when coming across a natural predator or another danger that they are genetically programmed to avoid.

The real sounds that exist in nature make up the so-called 'key stimuli proxy', which consists of the highest priority stimuli known to arouse fear in animals. Other common solutions, widely used in Western European countries on tracks of high or highest velocity railways, are high wire fences or sub- and on-ground constructions like tunnels or overpasses. In comparison, our device has many merits. Firstly, the animals are virtually free to cross the tracks that lie within their feeding and mating grounds. Secondly, the investment to be made is significantly lower.

UOZ-1 devices are installed on a concrete foundation in the usual places where animals cross the railway line. UOZ-1 are placed in line with the electric traction poles, each one on the alternate side of the railway tracks. The device is of cylinder shape (110 cm high and approx. 30 cm wide in diameter). The grey casing is made of epoxide and glass composites.

First series of UOZ-1 devices was installed on the modernized section of the E20 railway line between Mińsk Mazowiecki and Siedlce. Currently UOZ-1 devices operate on many sections of the main railway lines in Poland. In 2012, we have completed the first contract outside Polish borders - the UOZ-1 have been installed on two 3-kilometer high-speed railway line: sections Moscow - St. Petersburg and St. Petersburg - Helsinki.

Preliminary studies of UOZ-1 devices conducted by the Research Institute of Forestry, and subsequent five-year monitoring commissioned by the PKP-PLK and conducted by team of researchers from the School of Life Sciences in Warsaw proved high effectiveness of the devices in preventing animal-train collisions. It was proved that both wild herbivorous mammals (deer, wild boars and hares) and predators (foxes) correctly understand the "key stimuli" used to warn against the danger. At the same time the animals do not give up abandon their habitats located near the railway line with installed UOZ-1 devices, they still likely use the area in the vicinity of a railway line as feeding ground and freely cross the tracks between the passages of trains.